The present application relates generally to an improved data processing apparatus and method and more specifically to mechanisms for policy-based load distribution between host-based packet processing units.
A hypervisor or virtual machine monitor (VMM) is a piece of computer software, firmware, or hardware that creates and runs virtual machines (VMs). A computer on which a VMM is running one or more virtual machines is defined as a host machine. Each virtual machine is called a guest machine. The VM presents the guest operating systems with a virtual operating platform and manages the execution of the guest operating systems. Multiple instances of a variety of operating systems may share the virtualized hardware resources.